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SERS members have recently been targeted by a variety of phishing scams, including emails, phone calls, and text messages that attempt to impersonate or imply affiliation with SERS.

Emails
The fraudulent emails may provide links, including DocuSign, and allege to provide the member with the option to sign up and receive their monthly SERS benefit payments four days early by providing personal financial information, including bank account information.  SERS does not offer an early benefit payment option or request personal or banking information by email or use of DocuSign.  Please note that our emails are always sent from an srs.illinois.gov email address.

Phone calls and Text messages
Several members have recently reported receiving unsolicited phone calls and text messages from individuals claiming to be associated with SERS.  These individuals initially contact the member by phone call or text message and attempt to set up counseling appointments with the member, generally through a follow-up email and/or text message.  These phone calls have been received on State landlines and State issued cell phones.  SERS does not contract with anyone outside of the agency to contact members about retirement counseling appointments or other financial services. SERS does not cold call members for retirement consultations, and only schedules retirement counseling appointments at the request of the member.

If you receive a suspicious email, call, or text message that purports to be SERS that you suspect is a scam, please report this activity to the SERS call center at 217-785-7444. Information that you provide can help SERS prevent and detect schemes that impact our members. 

Employer Services Website Announcement

Employer Services Website Announcement

As part of the security tightening effort, we are moving Employer Services out of Member Services website. As an employer, you will be required to use Workforce Portal to access Employer Services. Workforce Portal is a secured, multi-factored authentication system run by the State of Illinois. You will be required to use your work email address to sign up for the Workforce account. These changes will be effective on Monday, 11/14/2022.

What you can expect from the transition

Workforce Account

  • If you have an illinois.gov email address, you should already have a Workforce account. The login credential should be the same as your network credential. You can use the same credential to login to Employer Services.
  • If you do not have an Illinois.gov email address, you may still already have a Workforce account. SRS requested that all work email addresses of our Retirement Coordinators, Payroll Coordinators and Signature Designees be added to Workforce. You may have/will receive an email to verify your email address and then you will follow the instructions to set up Multifactor Authentication to your account. Please refer to the attached instructions

Multifactor Authentication (MFA)

  • MFA adds security to your Workforce account. You must complete this final step. Workforce has five authentication methods to choose from. At least one is required, but it is highly recommended you choose two or more methods in case one option is not available. SMS Text and Voice Call are the options most frequently used.
  • Okta Verify
  • Google Authenticator
  • YubiKey Authenticator
  • SMS Text Authentication
  • Voice Call Authentication

Will I see any difference with Employer Services?

  • You are required to use Workforce Portal for authentication.
  • You will no longer see the Landing page where you can choose to go to Member Services or Employer Services. Instead, you will be directed to the Employer Dashboard.
  • You will no longer be able to see your own personal membership page as an Employer.
  • To reach your personal member record, please use the Public Portal.
  • The look and feel of the website will remain the same, as well as the employer functionalities.

I am getting the “Not Authorized” error message

  • You will need to login with your Network ID. This is the ID that you log into your PC with every morning. For those with an Illinois.gov email address, it will be your first name.last name (Jane.Doe). For others, it may be just your first initial and last name (JDoe).
  • If you are an authorized employer and you are getting the not authorized error message the first time you sign in through the Workforce portal, it could be that we do not have your correct work email address in our system. Please login to Member Services website to update your work email address and start the process again.
  • If you are a new employer and would like access Employer Services, please contact your agency Retirement Coordinator to fill out an authorization form.

What else do I need to do after conversion?

  • If you have bookmarked Member Services web address in your browser to perform employer duties, please update the new web address to point to Employer.srs.illinois.gov.

Technical Support

SRS Help Desk
Phone: 217-782-4202
Support@srs.illinois.gov
SRS Support Tool

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